Fellowship encourages teachers to celebrate unsung heroes

Seaman High School History Teacher Susan Sittenauer is among a dozen winners of this year's fellowships from the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes.

Washburn Rural High School Art teacher Brad LeDuc is among a dozen winners of this year's fellowships from the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes.

An education organization has granted fellowships to two local teachers, inviting them to help students explore history’s untold stories.

Seaman High School history teacher Susan Sittenauer and Washburn Rural High art teacher Brad LeDuc are among a dozen winners of this year’s fellowships from the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes.

Each year, the center seeks out educators in the U.S. and abroad who excel at teaching respect and understanding. The fellows work on classroom projects that challenge students to identify and learn about unsung heroes.

The fellowship was created by businessman Lowell Milken in collaboration with former Kansas teacher Norman Conard and Conard’s former student, Megan Felt. It was inspired by research that Felt and her classmates did about a Polish woman who rescued Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The students wrote a play about the woman, Irena Sendler, that has been performed more than 350 times in the U.S. and abroad, according to the Lowell Milken Center.

Sittenauer, who is well-known at her school for the in-depth research projects she assigns her students, said she is excited about asking them this year to dig through primary sources in search of new stories that deserve to be told.

“The thing about project-based learning,” she said, “is when students start researching a topic they are really interested in, they are the ones who are discovering, then becoming experts on the topic and sharing.”

Last week Sittenauer, who has taught at Seaman High for 29 years, attended training at the Lowell Milken Center in Fort Scott as part of the fellowship.

“That was probably one of the most meaningful weeks of professional development I’ve ever had,” she said. “I’m really excited.”

Sittenauer teaches advanced-placement history and a government class that she designed on the topic of criminal and civil rights. Throughout the years, more than 100 of her students have won honors at state and national history contests, according to Seaman Unified School District 345, and Sittenauer helped raise money to cover travel costs for those competitions.

Ron Vinduska, principal of Seaman High, said her strengths as a teacher include her conviction that students can achieve more than they think they are capable of.

“She has very high expectations,” Vinduska said. “Her students learn how to do research and they get really engaged in projects that bring it all to life.”

Sittenauer said research projects help students learn not only how to locate information, but also how to discern its credibility. Those skills are important, regardless of what students plan to do after high school, she said.

LeDuc, who has taught art at Washburn Rural High for six years, said the Milken fellowship training was a valuable experience.

“You become the student for a week,” he said, “just trying to soak up all the things about how to research unsung heroes.”

LeDuc won last year’s prestigious Milken Educator Award, considered a top honor for teachers in the U.S., and has been recognized by The Topeka Capital-Journal as a Distinguished Kansan.

His classroom assignments often challenge his students to incorporate community and social awareness into their creative process. LeDuc’s students participate, for example, in The Memory Project, a program that connects them with orphans abroad, whose portraits they paint.

“People, more than ideas, is probably where inspiration is at,” he said.

Washburn Rural principal Ed Raines has said LeDuc’s strong points include his humility and desire to continue improving his teaching skills.

This year’s Milken fellows also include a third Kansas teacher — Dyane Smokorowski, who was the state’s 2013 teacher of the year. Smokorowski is an English teacher with 16 years of experience in the Wichita, Renwick and Andover school districts, the center said, and has been identified by the National School Boards Association as a key person to watch for leadership on classroom technology matters.